Electronic devices, such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDA's), often contain firmware and application software that are either provided by the manufacturers of the electronic devices, by telecommunication carriers, or by third parties. These firmware and application software often contain software bugs. New versions of the firmware and software are periodically released to fix the bugs or to introduce new features, or both.
Problems may arise when informing a mobile handset of a need to update its firmware or software. Also, it is necessary to determine whether a notification received by a mobile handset is authentic. It may be possible for an unauthorized and illegal software hacker to emulate a management server and send a notification to electronic devices such as, for example, mobile handsets, misleading them into retrieving an unauthorized and unauthentic update package. The need to authenticate update notifications is a significant issue.
Supporting the download of update packages by thousands of mobile handsets from an operator's network has proven problematic. Identifying the appropriate update package for a mobile handset has proven problematic as well.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art through comparison of such systems with the present invention.